Coming home!

I'm SO sorry I haven't kept you updated during the last few weeks! As you can guess Miri and I have been pretty busy and we were always on the road. You know how we are ;-) Well Spokane was great and seeing Miris dad and sister was really nice for Miri. And then Miri, her dad and me finally went to Montague! For Miri it felt like she just left but still there were so many people missing.. Diane and Rich kept us pretty busy while Miris dad was there (I'll tell you everything about that when we're back) and then the week after that we finally got to hang out with Jorge (and his friends Josh and Amy who are great!) and some others (I have to say pretty cool people). We had so much fun and so many things have happened but I think it is about time to go back to Germany. Miri is pretty torn between wanting to go back home (because she really misses all of you) and wanting to stay another month.. I can really tell how good it is for her to spend time with her friends from high school. She is so happy every day!


But the plane tickets are bought and there is no backing up so get ready because we are coming home monday evening!!! And whoever has time to come over for a few hours is very welcome to do so! We probably won't be there till about 8 o'clock though.. maybe later..

See you soooooon!
We're so terribly excited!

huggs and kisses!
Miri and Cabby

Back in the States

..but this time in Seattle! And the best thing is: we can finally understand everybody again!!! ;-) In the end it was kind of frustrating not to be able to understand those Argentinians but now everything is easy.
Well.. easy is probably said too much.. Miri brought us into some more or less serious trouble! So we had two flights to get to Seattle (from Buenos Aires to Houston and then to Seattle) and it took 20 hours! Plus the time change, no showers and bad entertainment.. you can guess how we arrived at the airport... There we had to look for a place to store our luggage and call Angel (pronounce: anchel) who is the owner of the couch we are crashing on right now ;-) So it was about 11 in the morning and Angel had to work till about 9.30 (we already knew that.. that's why we stored the backpack..) which meant that we had to figure out what to do with that time. So what else is there to do in a city than walk around and look at some buildings, the waterfront, the library.. what? you don't normally first go to the library when you get to a town? ..well we either but this one is quite fancy! It's all modern and looks crazy in the inside! AND: there is free internet for 90 mins!! So you can guess where we are right now^^
So at around 8 we went back to the airport, wanted to call Miris sister from there and get the luggage and all the sudden Miri notices that her Passport isn't there! We looked everywhere but we couldn't find it. There were just too many things in her little backpack.. oh I thought I am going to go crazy! We asked at the information desk but nobody has seen it. So we could only go back into town and meet um with Angel because it was already 9. We were so devastated the whole busride back and didn't talk one word.. and it took for ever.. finally we found out that we had taken the wrong bus which took 45 minutes to town instead of 20! AAAHHH what a messed up day! You can guess how we felt.. So when we go to the meetingplace Angel of course wasn't there and all the payphones we could find were either out of order or took our money but didn't dial the correct numbers.. in the end we asked some guys if we could use their cell phone and it turned out that Angel was only about 100m from where we stood. Thank god! What a relief! One thing that worked this day..
Just before we went to bed Miri threw all of her stuff out of the backpack and, guess what we found.. THE PASSPORT
..I wanted to kill her! So much trouble because of NOTHING!!!

So as you can see in the end it wasn't too bad but still.. it could have been really bad!


Today we went to a really nice part of the city, called Seattle Center. It is actually a really nice park with a lot of art and tons of tourist attractions (which we didn't go to^^) and now we're here in teh library again to finally catch up with all the stuff we didn't during the last week.

And the best thing is: Tomorrow (in about 21 hours we will see Rebekka and Miris Dad! Yeehaw!

back in BA!

Actually it wasn't too exciting because nobody had time to meet me (especially Nico who we wanted to meet again before we left..) but it just didn't happen. On monday we went for the last time to the tango lessons and met a guy agian that we knew from the times we went before. So in the end we went together with 5 other people to a Milonga where Andrew, the teacher performed that night. The performance was really good but there were just so many other people who were just flying over the dancefloor that Miri just sat there staring at all those people! It was amazing how fast they moved and before you could blink they were at the other end of the room!
Oh.. I have to tell you: our departure from the house was pretty crazy! We stayed at the same familys house again, like we did the three weeks we were studying spanish. So on tuesday at 8.45 pm we had the flight to Seattle and we asked the Mom what the best way would be to get there (this is at about 1.45 pm). So she starts to look up different stuff and finally, half an hour later she finds out that there is a bus that drives directly to the airport.. only difficulty: the bus takes 3 hours! And Miri and I just looked at each other and said: what?!? because that would mean that we would have to leave at 2.30 to get to the busstation, have enough time to check in and all of that.. fortunately we had already packed all our stuff but we still had to return the cellphone we had borrowed from a friend of Guillermos. Oh shit! But the Mom told us to calm down and that it'll be all right. So when we figured everything out, had a little bit to eat and finally left the house it was already 3 o'clock. Our last mission was to buy some yerba for the mate and then up to the Subte and the busstation. So we got there.. thougth everything was going to be fine.. but.. the bus didn't come! We started asking people and they just said that it has to come every minute and we wait. At almost 4 it finally comes and we ask the busdriver, just to be sure and what can I tell you: he was not going to the airport! What? It was one bus of another number (which has passed us about 8 times in between) AAAHHH I hate this bussystem! Not that you neverknow where the busstation is, you can't even rely on the guide and then they have busses with the same number but different routes! I could go insane!
End of the story: the bus only took 2 hours, so we got there at about 6 pm and had plenty of time.. ufff!

Asado, Vino y la paisaje

Yup, that's what it was all about.. you want to know what place I'm talking about? It's called Cafayate (Miri would pronounce this Kafaschaate^^) and is set in the south of the province Salta. It's one of the biggest wine regions in Argentina and they make some pretty good wine ther! And it's strong!!! Holy crap! One glas of the vino tinto and you're done for the night! Of course Miri and I went on a little winetasting tour, together with Daniel our host there. The problem was that he only spoke spanish but to my surprise Miri and he had so much fun together! They were just laughing the whole time! ..don't ask me why.. maybe it was the wine.. for sure! In this village they even have empanadas with wine and: wine-ice cream!!! Huiiiuiiiuiiiuiuiuiii! That was strong! So after the wine-tasting we did some cheese-tasting at the local cheese factury. It was a cute old building and they had surprisingly good cheese. It was not as soft as all the other stuff you can buy in Argentina..
Daniel was working at one of the Hostels in Town from 4 pm and so Miri and I mostly hung out there too and played ping pong, chatted with the others... the second day we were the Daniel and his mom made some Empanadas from scratch and Miri helped them. I stayed out of this because I was afraid that I was going to end up in one of them if they didn't pay attention! Those thing are about the same size that I am.. imagine.. It took them about 2 to 2.5 hours to get all done and Miris first Empanada looked like.. well let's just say not good.. :-) but I also have to say that she learned pretty quickly and the next ones were pretty good! Believe me, it's harder than it looks because they have to look a certain way..
And when we got to the hostel all of a sudden the owners who are friends of Daniels brought this huge birthday cake! It was the birthday of their 5year old son and we had a little party with all the people from the hostel! It was nice! ..and the cake was so yummiiiieeee!!! At night we had another highlight: Asado! This is basicly BBQ but if you tell that to Argentinians they will get mad at you.. so beware! :-) We had so much meat on the table! I think it was about 4 kilos for 9 people.. uff.. but those people really know how to grill, let me tell you!
And as if there were not enough strong liquids in this region, Daniel took us to a belgian brewery that made beer with 8%!!

Salta - La Linda

Yes, it's so true! Salta is a beautiful place! And I mean both, the province Salta and the city itself! We stayed at Marcos house for those days and even though he was pretty busy with studying for his exam we had a great time! (sorry guys that I repeat myself in every post but what can I do? It was just like that..) So anyway. We kind of had to explore the city by ourselves, walked around a little bit and did this awesome daytrip to the Salinas and many other beautiful places. The beginning was kindo of disappointing though because we were expecting so much and it wasn't that different from other places we have seen but then we got to the second part and I have to say: incredible! There are massive rockformations in all kinds of different colors! You don't believe it until you actually see it! They were green, blue, red, even yellow and violet! You just have to wait for the pictures...

staying longer than intended to..

In Iguazú we met this guy from England (John), we told him what our plans for teh next few days were and he asked us if it would be ok for us if he is comming with us.. well he was all right and so we said that it would be all right for a couple of days.. but not too much! So we went to the some ruins of the Jesuits called "San Ignacio Mini" which was really interesting and then to Posadas. The city is not interesting at all.. well at least Miri and I couldn't find anything special about it and so the next day we left to Corrientes where we had someone from couchsurfing to stay at. The only thing that kind of bugged us was that John still followed us. Really.. it sounds weird but it was like that. He travelled with us but it was like we went where we wanted to and he just came with us. After a while Miri got really sick of it and we did some stuff without him but he kind of had the same route as we did and so he also went with us to Corrientes.. At least there we were a little bit more free because there were other people to hang out with ;-) And I have to say it was the best couchsurfing experience at all! Even though Corrientes is not a really historic or exciting city we loved it! Nico, the guy we were staying with was Miris age, supercool, had two sisters (Cynthia and Valeria) and a great family! Sometimes it was hard to talk to the family because they only knew Spanish but in the end we got it somehow ;-) Nico, Cynthia and Val took us to so many places, told us about regional food, Tedere (similar to Mate but with cold juice.. yummie and refreshing!) and took us around the city. We had so much fun together and the time passed way too quickly and when I think about it.. it's so sad that we had to leave! They were like family for us.

There is no water in the waterfalls!!!!

Before we got to the waterfalls we had another busride to manage.. it was an overnight one and for the first 3 hours we had some company from a guy called Nicolas. He only spoke spanish ..well a little bit english as well but that didn't help much so Miri had to talk the whole time in spanish. It was quite funny how they tried to explain things to each other and sometimes it just didn't make sense ;-)

The earth was so red! And people seem to live in the middle of nowhere. There are no tarred streets except for the one we were on...

The night was not as comfortable as it could have been but we got over it and checked into the hostel. There we met Adelie from England and because it was only 2 o'clock we decided to take a look at the waterfalls. Everybody always talks about it and it is the only reason people come to this little town called Puerto de Iguazú. But people also told us that there is no water in the falls because it hasn't been raining for quite some time.. so we had no idea what to expect but this is what we found:

Water!!!

I can't tell weather this is much or not (probably not from other pictures I saw) but it was a massive amount!

It was so beautiful! There were thousands of little waterfalls coming down.

There are supposed to be 270 Waterfalls in this place over 2.7 km long!! I really have no clue how they counted those waterfalls but.. there are a lot! It is such a huge place and there is also a track that leads you directly underneath.. well not quite but close^^ to the waterfalls and you get soaking wet when you stand there for some minutes!

A coatí.. they were everywhere! Later in the day we saw some more on the other side of a fence.. a woman next to us thought they were so cute and wanted to give them some food. All the sudden there were about 10 coatís jumping over the fance! I have no clue where they came from but it looked like a wave! And the woman and her friends ran for their lifes! It was hulerious! ;-)

The next day Adelie left us and we went to the brazilian side to get a nice overview of the waterfalls. Yes, we went to Brazil for the day! We were so stoked about it but then we found out that we don't get a stamp in our passports :-( we just left Argentina for some hours and then entered again. ..so does that mean we were in no country for the time in between??? That's not fair!

An overview of one part of the "Cataratas" (waterfalls) from the brazilian side

A little firend along the way ;-)

Miri, me and the waterfalls! We were there!! Yeah!

Enjoy:

Jusdt when we were about to leave the park we met some people we had seen the day before on the argentinian side. ..in the end we went with them to the biggest dam in the world, called Itaipú.

running-metal-man

part of the dam.. it was pretty big!

I don't know if she was drunk when we were there but for some reason the picture is quite sloped..

4 crazy-looking people in front of this humongeous turbine!

The dam belongs half to Brazil and half to Paraguay.. so in fact we have been to paraguay as well! Take a look at this:

Miri is standing in two coundtries at the same time!!